Crosby had his fourth career hat trick and added two assists for his second five-point game and the Pittsburgh Penguins won for the fourth time in five games, 8-3 over the Rangers on Saturday.

"It's always fun to get the hat trick, but especially tonight it was a lot of fun," said Crosby, who fell a point short of his career high for points. "It was pretty weird the way it worked out, but what better time to do it?"

Crosby scored once in the first and twice in the third period and added two-first period assists to help the Penguins rout the Rangers, winless in regulation at Mellon Arena in their past 13 tries.

Evgeni Malkin, Max Talbot, Mark Eaton, Pascal Dupuis and Tyler Kennedy also scored for Pittsburgh, which has won six of eight and remained tied with Washington atop the Eastern Conference standings with 36 points.

Defensemen Marc Staal, Matt Gilroy and Michal Rozsival scored for the Rangers, who have lost four of six and is 6-12-1 since a 7-1 start.

The Penguins welcomed three regulars back to the lineup from injury — winger Kennedy and defensemen Alex Goligoski and Kris Letang — in scoring their most goals of the season and most against the Rangers since 2000.

Crosby scored 17:43 into the contest to break a 1-1 tie and give Pittsburgh a lead it would never relinquish, barely keeping a Rangers clearing attempt in the zone, walking in and firing a wrist shot that beat Rangers backup goalie Steve Valiquette high to the stick side.

His second of the game and 14th of the season came 3:14 into the third, 2:51 after former Penguin Rozsival had pulled the Rangers to 4-3. Malkin had slipped a puck along the goal line while Valiquette sprawled, and Crosby picked up the puck and banked it off him.

The Rangers have allowed 13 goals in their past two games after a 5-1 loss at Tampa Bay Friday that coach John Tortorella called "probably our worst game we've played all year long."

"We played decent hockey (Saturday)," said veteran winger Vinny Prospal. "Obviously, the score didn't indicate that in our favor, but we were in the hockey game. We were close. It was totally different than in Tampa yesterday.... The effort was there tonight."

Matt Cooke's hit on the Rangers' Artem Ansimov knocked him out of the game.

"He leaves his feet, it's an absolute head shot, the linesman jumps in when somebody else is trying to take care of business, that should have been left alone," Tortorella said. "This is where our game is screwed up as far as I'm concerned. There is just no respect for these types of situations."